


Ut Somnium, Ut Vivere

by softiebee



Series: 30 Day Cheesy Trope Challenge [8]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 30 Day Cheesy Tropes Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 13:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8250775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softiebee/pseuds/softiebee
Summary: Five times Ronan dreamed of Adam and one time he didn't.





	

**Author's Note:**

> from the prompt: love at first [dream]
> 
> this is a work of fiction. all characters belong to maggie steifvater and the raven cycle series.

It wasn’t love, at first.

At first, it wasn’t even _Adam._ It was Gansey. Jesus, Ronan would bite off one of his own fingers if someone said they didn’t have at least a bit of a crush on Gansey - he was intoxicating, in an unwitting, nerdy way. But that hadn’t lasted long. Ronan was good at shutting off feelings if he didn’t think anything would come of them, and so it was with Richard Gansey, III, and so it wasn’t with Adam Parrish.

At first, with Adam, it had just been annoyance. Ronan was always annoyed, but no one seemed to itch under his skin like Adam did. Every move he made pinched Ronan right where he couldn’t reach. He’d passed it off as jealousy: he wasn’t used to competition in Latin, he wasn’t used to competition in their three, he wasn’t used to competition for Gansey. Maybe it had been jealousy, briefly. And then it hadn’t.

At distinct second, it had just been companionship. An easy sense of camaraderie between the four of them, looking for Glendower, looking for lost keys. Ronan could pull an easy arm around Adam’s shoulders and think nothing of it until later, lying in bed, awake in a tired and tried town blanketed by the night. Nothing had been at stake, and nothing had been for show. At third, it had just been looking. Noticing. Finding new things to see on Adam’s hands and neck, tracing the shape of Adam’s face with his eyes, so often and so completely that it became habit. Second nature. Ronan must have made so many excuses for it then, he would need everyone’s hands to count them all.

At fourth, it had been coming to terms. He could distinctly remember the first night, sitting up in bed and saying it out loud, quietly, then louder, and tracing it onto his arm until he fell asleep again. It was easy enough. Easier than he expected. The hard part came when he saw Adam the next day, hair pushed back, and he couldn’t ignore the rush of blood in his ears and his heart in his throat. He thought it must have been written clearly on his face, and the rest of them were all blind.

At fifth, it had been dreams. Once Ronan was aware of it, once he could think it clearly and feel it in his veins, Adam lived behind his eyelids on the other side of consciousness. Dreams were too honest with Ronan. Sometimes he could take a dream and make it soft in his hands, but there were other times that he was tied tight in them as soon as he fell asleep, and they would go to Adam again and again and again, until Ronan came to expect it. 

-

The first night Ronan dreamed of Adam, it was a Tuesday, and his room at Monmouth was hot. He had spent an hour trying to kick his sheets into some position where they wouldn’t cling to his skin, becoming more and more frustrated until Gansey had knocked softly twice on his door, an unspoken plea for silence that, more often than not, was either ignored or resolved by Ronan going to be frustrated on the couch instead of in his room. Tonight, it was taken care of by a pill and a swallow of water, and then Cabeswater was at his fingertips, on his skin, in the air that he breathed. 

A while back, Gansey and Blue had been talking about how difficult it was to remember or tell if they were dreaming in color. How they would lose sight of the dream, or lose assuredness that it had been what they thought it was. Ronan’s dreams didn’t let go of him that easily - they stayed stacked in the back of his head, surfacing and resurfacing to remind him that he wasn’t alone when he slept. The color in them latched onto the backs of his eyes and refused to let go. He couldn’t see anything so vividly anywhere else.

Being pushed into a dream now, an action that was always accompanied by a sickening lurch, felt like having new eyes. It felt like this every night he dreamed, to a degree, but some dreams were brighter than others, and this one was full of so much light that it almost hurt Ronan to look at it, even under the canopy of trees. 

There was nothing to take from this dream. There wasn’t any sound, any feeling, any movement, and when Ronan started to breathe in, the air caught in his throat and stiffened. When he spoke, the words fell out of his mouth and landed at his feet.

_hello?_

It was Adam, not the Orphan Girl, who stepped out into the clearing. Ronan felt himself tense.

_why are you here?_

“This is your head,” Dream Adam responded, craning his neck to look up through the trees. “You tell me.”

Considering this, it was so absurdly logical that Ronan almost wanted to punch Dream Adam in the nose. 

_i don’t know._

Dream Adam shrugged. “Guess I don’t know, either.” He started to walk back towards the trees, but Ronan pulled him back by the sleeve of his shirt. 

_stay. that might be why._

“What might be why?”

_i’ll tell you later. when i’m awake._

When Ronan woke up again, his heart was pounding, and he had sweated through his T-shirt. 

-

The second time Ronan dreamed of Adam was the first night he slept back in the Barns. In his room, the windows were open, and the sweet Henrietta wind followed him as he slept. When he opened his eyes, it was skimming across his wrists, slipping through his hair, pulling his feet slowly forward to the clearing, where Dream Adam was lying in a patch of sun.

_that’s unlike you._

“Is it?” Dream Adam nudged his chin up to the sky. “Look. That cloud kind of looks like Gansey.”

Ronan joined him, feeling slightly ridiculous. _looks like a dick to me._

“A Richard,” Dream Adam corrected, and Ronan felt himself laugh, deep in his belly. 

_that one’s you._ He pointed to a long, flat cloud, wrapping around itself several times off to the side.

“Is that one you, then?” Dream Adam pointed to a little gray speck, hardly a cloud at all. Ronan kicked his knee and Dream Adam started to laugh, then reached down for Ronan’s hand and took it. “Just kidding. That one’s you.” He pointed to a large, puffy cloud, floating just to the right of the Adam Cloud. 

_why is that one me?_

“Why is that one me?” Countered Dream Adam, and Ronan shrugged.

_fair point._

“Mm.”

-

The third time Ronan dreamed of Adam, he was drunk. Henry Cheng’s parties were always loud and always mediocre and, when he invited them, he was really only inviting Gansey and allowed the rest to come along as something to compensate Gansey for how loud and mediocre it would be. Ronan didn’t dislike Henry -- it was hard to dislike someone that Blue and Gansey so clearly had a crush on -- but he did dislike his parties, and when he was unable to avoid going, he got blackout drunk as quickly as possible, which usually ended up in a long, drawn out nap.

Falling asleep while drunk felt like swimming in syrup. It kind of looked like it, too - Ronan almost tried to use his arm as some kind of windshield wiper, then decided against it. As the dream came up to hit him, the edges became more clear, and then he was in the clearing with Dream Adam. He stumbled forward, unbalanced, and Dream Adam caught him by the shoulders.

“Are you okay?”

_kinda drunk back there._

“Does that usually stay when you’re dreaming?”

Ronan shook his head. _i’m not drunk here. it’s different._

Dream Adam frowned and stepped back, sitting down with his shoulders against a tree trunk. “Why do you do that?”

_do what?_

“Get drunk.”

Ronan sat next to him. _trying to get me to tell my secrets?_

“I’ll tell you mine.”

He considered this, then said, _it’s hard to get away sometimes. ___

“Get away from what?”

He waved a hand. all… this. it’s everywhere, all the time, and sometimes i don’t want to be. He shifted uncomfortably against the tree, and Dream Adam nodded.

_aren’t you going to tell me yours?_

The dream was slipping away. Ronan could feel himself becoming less substantial inside of it, could feel the matter of himself regaining consciousness. 

“Later,” Dream Adam said. “When I’m awake.”

-

The fourth time Ronan dreamed of Adam, it was quiet, but not still. Something in it had deafened Ronan, and he could feel that there were things to be heard, but sound was being pulled so quickly away from his ears that he could never quite reach them. When Dream Adam appeared, mouth moving quickly, Ronan tried to say i can’t hear you, but he couldn’t feel the words in his throat, and when his lips formed around them, his mouth was empty.

_something is wrong._

Dream Adam hesitated, feet planted so firmly Ronan almost thought something was trying to pull him away. 

_what are you doing?_

Sound rushed towards Ronan, pulling at his ears and hands and mouth.

“-hear me?”

_yes._

Something was pulling at Dream Adam, curling around his ankles, a white mist that whispered and muttered and tugged hard enough that Ronan could almost feel it on his own skin. He was leaning forward, one hand laid out, open, and when Ronan took it, Dream Adam fell towards him and kept falling. Ronan never felt his back touch the ground. 

-

The fifth time Ronan dreamed of Adam, he was on the floor at St. Agnes, and the night was clear enough that when he slipped into the dream, the sky was still there, pouring thin light over his shoulders. His heart was thumping in his chest, and he was thinking about Adam and Dream Adam, trying to reconcile the two, or to find the differences. Was one real? Was the other not? 

Cabeswater was liquid in this air, running between Ronan’s fingers.

Dream Adam could just be _Adam._

The thought very nearly made Ronan trip over, but he took a wide step and regained balance, and Dream Adam -- possibly Adam Adam -- came out of nowhere, steadying him needlessly with a careful hand on his elbow. Ronan caught it and held it. He could feel his pulse in his wrist.

Where was the difference? This was Adam’s hand, Adam’s eyes, Adam’s messy shock of hair. Never had Ronan dreamed something in such exact detail. There was a whisper of something, wind in the trees, scattered words between blades of grass, and Ronan pulled Dream Adam closer.

_are you real?_

Dream Adam smiled, and it was Adam’s smile. “Hoc est non somnium.”

_This is not a dream._

-

Ronan was awake so quickly it was as if he had been hurtled there. His fingers were twisted in one of Adam’s thin blankets, and something else, something soft, warm, breathing.

_Adam._

Adam, who was awake, who was real, who was not a dream. _Hoc est non somnium._

When he spoke, Ronan’s voice was hoarse. “I thought I dreamt you.”

“You could never dream me,” Adam murmured, and Ronan kissed him so quickly he could almost taste the words on his lips. 

_This is not a dream._

_This is not a dream._

_This is not a dream._

**Author's Note:**

> redemption!! redemption!! i very nearly didn't post yesterday because of my lack of success with the outside pov prompt and that got me down quite a bit, but at least in this one i managed to write more than 500 words. i love five times fics a lot, and i'm sure i'll come back to the format when i have more time to work on it, but mostly i'm just glad to finish out a weekend.  
> for tomorrow's fic (day 9) i'm going to switch out memory loss with ~~something else~~ (probably a college adam). quite honestly, i have no idea what i'd write for memory loss, and i don't need to make a monday harder for myself than it already will be.  
> much love to those of you reading and keeping up with this series!! i love and appreciate all of you and i'm so glad you're enjoying what i can put up. 
> 
> as always, comments and kudos make my day! you can find me on tumblr at c-beswater.


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